At just over a page this time it seems my American Journal has finally dried up and come to an end. However, I have written a short Afterword for the incidents that, ‘fell through the cracks,’ so to speak in my American Journal.
Page 17
Not least of great delight in the wildlife of Duchess County, as brought back to back so speak with that of England, is the increased case of marvellous morning choresters. I noticed this as soon as the first night was spent, as the icy infant frost of the day became levened with the vivid sound of the purest pitched octave offered from some faltering throat, melting over me from high boughs in the heavens, as if a molasses, a contrast to man’s organised music. I did not catch the bird’s name but caught its sound, which is the important thing. { It seems this bird was the humming bird. )
Indeed there do seem to be many more birds here of such variety of coats and unique vocal range, that one supposes the ornathologist could happily fold up his notepad and go to sleep in transports of delight just listening to their lyrical calls from the trees across their conductors, the branches, as he stokes up his brow aimlessly and dallies in bliss beneath some Bergonia. Some of the birds however are unpleasant to the eye. I noticed one bird in particular which had all the likeness to the common or garden English crow, except that its coat was highlighted with flecks of red. By and large the birdlife I obsereved was much more pleasant than otherwise, and the secret deep-velved voices of Duchess County { It seems here I meant the Humming birds } especially so.
I concluded that the wildlife of Duchess County was like a prolific mirror image of the many shy creatures of the English habitat so rarely glimpsed by its human inhabitants, like the fox, with the addition of an unusual array of animals that would seem misplaced in England. Examples of these include the beaver, the polecat, the wild hog, the lynx, the snapping turtle and the chipmunk. And it was only the absence of animals like these that made the onlooker think he was not somewhere in the heart of the Cotswolds. But no, it was not England’s green chase, but the ambling lanes of its near-double, Duchess County.
From what little I saw of New England, passing through it briefly, I would say that it approached no nearer to the perfect image of pastoral England than adjacent Duchess County did, indeed the two almost vied for accuracy of immitation. In fact much of the terrain of New York State is like England.
The atmosphere of the village of Millbrook and its surrounds was however a far cry from the English village. There was no trundling postman on his basket-bumpered bike, no pacing bobby on the beat, no crocodiles of little children wending their way to school down the mainstreet in Millbrook to the schoolhouse. The atmsophere of the village was noticeably empty and charmless compared to the English village. I could not imagine carriage wheels pounding their progress down the highways of the present, as one sometimes gets the feeling in the more hisitorically-preserved highways of Old England’s ancient towns and villages. Indeed I couldn’t imagine Millbrook as having had a history further back than the present, since the bonnets of cars seemed to predominate as they coasted along tar-mac, and the churches and civic buildings seemed too benevolent, too wrongly-bestowed, for a village so berift of villagers and children.
I could imagine Millbrook being a tourist trap in that one day visitors might arrive and be engulfed by the ground but in no other sense. It was this apparent void in community contact as compared to the close-knit, locuacious nature of the nattering English villages, that made me think that Millbrook could not possibly be a cottage oasis in upstate New York, if that was what it was intended to be.
The nearest one could arrive to the friendliness of the English village was in the village general store, where apart from the smiles and salutory enquiries after personal health { strange that! }, the clear pictorial comparison of the place was of a whaling station in winter time.
As the elongated bonnets of a bright variety of cars cruised their way down the dirt track Danube of the abundant estuaries to the village centre, it struck me that the village was more the confluence of a current for nature lovers… an occasional home… somewhere to go for essential supplies… nowhere to put too much of yourself into… not worth it since you were a ‘commuter colonial’ from the big city, passing through. These people are still more dependent on the pleasures of modern living, with all its conveniences, than those of the traditional country village. They are too cast in the mould of the city and its fast living lifestyle to be bothered with slowly ploughing the lines and furrows of the fields, not having an ox themselves, and definitely not brother to it.
Afterword
Re-reading my American Journal again after all these years what strikes me most are two things:- Firstsly, how prosaic my writing was back then and secondly the things I left out. As to the first, I was heavily under the spell of the romantic poets like Keats, Sheley and Byron back then, so that wasn’t so surprising, although as I had a life which was singularly unromantic at the time it is a little ironic. But perhaps it is this which lends my writing a certain innocence, and which appealed to me instantly on reading it again after a long interval of time. ‘What was I thinking’ I asked myself, as I re-read it. Did I want a place on Mount Rushmore? ( Impossible in my case since, as any American will tell you, you have to be born in America to become an American president. ) No, in the end it is nothing more than just America as seen through a young Englishman’s eyes at the time. And now the second thing that struck me on re-reading my journal, how much I could remember from my five-week American tour that got left out, didn’t appear in it. Of course it’s far too late to add itto the journal now ( and given the way I wrote back then, I think probably impossible ) but I don’t see it would do any harm to add them as an after word.
‘You’re English!’ screamed the girl – Stood before me was a six-foot Amazon of American womanhood, not beautiful, at least not in the traditional way, but attractive for sure.
‘Yes, I’m from near Liverpool,’ I said.
‘Oh, My God! Oh, My God! ….You’re English! … You’re English!’ she screamed. People were by now staring, and lets face it, Grand Central Station, where the incident took place, has a lot of people passing through it. Soon we had probably collected enough people for the viewing of a new painting at the National Gallery’s Summer Exhibition.
‘Oh, My God! Oh, My God!’ continued the girl, early to mid twenties like me, ‘… I must tell me brother. In fact … hey, look… can you wait ? Oh, please just wait?’
‘Of course I will,’ I said.
‘He should be coming off work real soon… he works on Wall Street you see… oh look, he’s here now.’ By this time I was feeling like Michaelangelo’s statue of David, ready for inspection.
The immaculately-turned out figure of the hysterical girl’s brother sailed up non-chanlantly and eyed me up and down dubiously, as though I were an escapee from Alcatraz.
‘Hi’ – he just about squoze out of his broad-shouldered, tight-fitting suit. He gave an ungenerous smile and turned to his sister with an expression that seemed to say WTF.
‘He’s from America Tony! And he’s travelling around… writing about our country…’ ( I’ve concluded that I must definitely have mentioned that. )
‘Really?… well, pleased to meet you,’ he said. ( I don’t think he offered a hand. )
Before I knew it, this slick character was elbow-elevating his hysterical sister away from me and on to one of the trains.
However you look at it, it was disappointing. Besides, I think she’d even asked me round for dinner.
There was also my nerve-shattering return journey to New York after visiting Washington, but as that is included here in this blog under ‘Journey’s End – The story of a panama hat’ I will merely mention it in passing.
Also on that journey back from Washington, on the Amtrak, I sat next to an American Vietnam war veteran. He was called Mike and seemed to be about mid-thrities. We spoke a bit about the war, which I remembered seeing on TV and had read about. He re-lived some recollections of his war, like parachuting into the green jungles of Vietnam with ‘a pot on your head.’ ( Soldiers jargon for a helmet I suppose. ) He seemed really well-adjusted after his war experiences, although it is well known there were many who did not re-adjust well to civilian life following America’s first military defeat in its two-hundred year old history.
Sat in a lonely hotel at Niagra Falls, Canadian side, I wrote a letter to my brother and his wife. I remember I wrote about a ‘river god,’ a sort of force of nature sweeping along America’s rivers, all- powerful. To my mind it might have been my own answer to Coleridge’s Kubla khan, and I regret having lost it in the act of sending it. ( i’m pretty sure he hasn’t still got it. ) It just shows, sometimes the best things we write can disappear, like a river’s cargo, and, well…. who’s to say that’s so wrong.
Stood on Bunker Hill with my uncle Derek, the sight of the famous battle, we were accosted by an immaculately-dressed short young man of about my age who was the guide to that historic site. ‘Can I help you?’ he said. ‘….Anything you’d like to know?’ he continued insistently. ‘….You can ask me anything you know?’ I’ve never known anybody so desperate to have a question put since Lady Faversham.
In the end we took pity on him and asked him a question. It must have been to do with the battle since he told us that where we were stood ( next to a bunker ) was not the site of the actual battle which was some way away. This begs the wonderfully mischievous question of what the heck he was doing there then! ( Just as well I didn’t ask that one. )
In Boston harbour we went on an old United States ship. I think it was The USS Chesapeake but I’m not sure. Once again, questions were encouraged from visitors and when I asked the youthful, spotty white-uniformed sailor something about the war of 1812 I got a surprise response. ‘Yeah, we fought the British and we licked ’em … yeah, we licked ’em,’ he said with disturbing relish. Had he picked up that I was British? – surely. Patriotism, always lurking just below the surface like a shark.
About a week before I was due to fly back to the UK my uncle read out the shocking news of an Air India jet having gone down just off Ireland with the loss of all on board. ‘You’re not scared are you?’ he asked. I wasn’t. We agreed that if your card is marked you’ve had it.
In the end it was a very pleasant flight back and I even remember seeing Rainford’s parish church, the village where I went to school, out of the window as I flew by. It was a small world.
I came to the conclusion after writing American Journal something that I still hold about America after all these years, namely that it is an endlessly fascinating place, a perfect place for young people to settle in, young but not only perhaps.
THE END
Disjointed Journeys 